The President of Russia Is Smarter Than the President* of the United States

Let's go to the Kremlin, where Blog Official Foreign Affairs correspondent Vladimir Putin has some thoughts on current events that he'd like to share. From CNN:

Speaking at a press conference in Sochi, Russia, Putin said Moscow could send its records of the encounter -- at which Trump is alleged to have shared top-secret intelligence with the Russian delegation -- to the US Congress. The intervention by Putin could turn up the pressure on the White House to provide its own transcript of the meeting. The Senate intelligence committee has already demanded a briefing on what was said at the meeting from members of the Trump administration who were present…Putin denied that Trump had shared intelligence in the meeting, describing the media reports on the issue as "political schizophrenia." "We are prepared to go there and explain our point of view to Congress if necessary," he said.

Any volunteers to go to the Kremlin and drop papers on this guy? Jared? Rex? Anyone?

This is master-level trolling by a guy who spotted a sucker years ago and who, even since, has abided in his relationship with the president* with the wisdom of Nikita Khrushchev, who famously said, "When you are skinning your customers, you should leave some skin on to heal, so that you can skin them again." No matter how you interpret the on-time arrival of Tuesday's regularly scheduled 5:30 p.m. impeachable offense, two things are quite clear: 1) the president of Russia is a lot smarter than the President* of the United States, and 2) the president of Russia has the President* of the United States, and the country itself, dancing merrily on a string.

(By the way, the Soviet political officer aboard the submarine who gets murdered in the first reel of The Hunt For Red October is named Ivan Putin. True fact.)

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He's not up to the job. This should be obvious by now. The most innocent explanation for the president*'s actions is that he's a blundering dotard who can't stop himself from destroying democratic institutions and from tripping over federal statutes. Even if you don't think he's done anything criminal, he's getting gamed from every point on the compass—by his own leaky staff, by James Comey, by the Russians. As LBJ once put it, he's on a highway in a thunderstorm; he can't run, he can't hide and he can't make it stop. But he's taken the dilemma one step further. He doesn't even think it's raining. Apparently, the Art of the Deal begins with being the biggest sucker who ever crossed the White House threshold.

There's been a lot of talk—particularly from conservatives and Republicans, who are desperately clinging to a tiny sliver of land—that the worst thing that's happening is that "politics" may be involved in resolving the problem of a president who is compromised, incompetent, and, perhaps, not altogether in the brain box. Unfortunately, this is entirely a political problem.

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Even if the whole thing gets tossed into some sort of gathering of Beltway wise men (Lee Hamilton? White courtesy phone, please.), it's still going to be a political problem seeking a political solution. The way you know this is the case is that, on Wednesday morning, the House Republicans huddled with Speaker Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny starver from the state of Wisconsin, and the first thing Ryan talked about afterwards was his plan to shove more wealth upwards with his tax plan, and the first thing most of the Freedom Caucus hardbars talked about was how this whole thing is a creation of ol' debbil media.

It is obvious – there are some people out there who want to harm the president. We have an obligation to carry out our oversight, regardless of which party is in the White House. That means before rushing to judgment we get all the pertinent information."

Beware any politicians from either side who tell you that they want to "keep politics out" of the resolution of this unfolding disaster. If one side is saying, "May we please have an investigation from someone not wholly in the tank?" and the other side is saying, "Blarg! Groot! Liberal media!" what you have is a political—and, to be honest, a cognitive—divide that is not bridgeable in any way except politics. Unless you're planning to staff an independent commission with Martians, it's not like a special commission is going to be immune from political infighting. (This was particularly the case within the 9/11 Commission, which has been undeservedly sanctified as the years have passed.) Politics is what we have. Hell, it's all we have.

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